Saturday, April 27, 2013

UN Peacekeeping in the DRC: A Band-Aid on a Gaping Wound

The United Nations announcement that it is sending an "intervention
force" to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is sparking debate
once again about the role of the UN and its peacekeeping missions in
conflict zones. This force will have a mandate to attack rebel groups
rather than just defend civilians, an aggressive step aimed at
preventing further war crimes in what is now the deadliest conflict
since World War Two. Many people might read this news and ask whether
or not the UN should get involved in a situation like this and whether
or not a UN peacekeeping force is capable of doing any good. These are
good questions to ask

At the same time, this announcement raises a much more fundamental
question about the United Nations and its role in the world; while the
UN sends troops to quell the violence in the Congo, after all, some of
its most powerful member states continue to support the countries
responsible for the violence in the first place. And so we are left to
wonder: if the United Nations is not the collective voice of its member
states, then what purpose exactly does it serve?

To answer that question as it pertains to the DRC, we
must first take a step back. The conflict in the DRC is the product of
both malicious and inept foreign intervention. French support for
Rwanda's genocidal government in the early 1990's helped spark a killing
spree in that country that was more ruthlessly efficient than the Nazi
concentration camps. American, French, and British inaction on the UN
Security Council ensured that UN peacekeepers stationed in Rwanda would
be unable to stop the killing. The American government was so desperate
to avoid sending troops to Rwanda because of the public relations
nightmare that had occurred when US troops were killed in Somalia just
months earlier (i.e. Black Hawk Down) that it refused to call the
genocide a "genocide:"

Elsner (Reuters): How would you describe the events taking place in Rwanda?
Shelly (State Department Spokeswoman): Based on the evidence we have seen from observations on the
ground, we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred
in Rwanda.

Elsner: What's the difference between "acts of genocide"
and "genocide"? Shelly: Well, I think the—as you know, there's a legal definition
of this ... clearly not all of the killings that have taken place in Rwanda
are killings to which you might apply that label ... But as to the distinctions
between the words, we're trying to call what we have seen so far as best as
we can; and based, again, on the evidence, we have every reason to believe
that acts of genocide have occurred. Elsner: How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide? Shelly: Alan, that's just not a question that I'm in a position to
answer.

The Rwandan genocide then directly led to the beginning of
the Congo conflict. A French intervention aimed at saving Paris'
genocidal allies allowed massive numbers of refugees and armed militias
to flee into what is now the DRC, all at the invitation of the West's
favorite kleptocratic dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Rwanda's new
government then invaded in an effort to wipe out the genocidal armies
arrayed against it and funded a Congolese rebel army that marched
thousands of miles to Kinshasa and toppled Mobutu. This is known as the
First Congo War.

But it is the Second Congo War, beginning in the late
1990's, that still rages today. Rwanda and Uganda, capitalizing on the
weak government in the DRC and the geographic distance between its
capital on Africa's western coast and the resource-rich hinterland in
the East, began attacking the DRC again, ostensibly to fight the
remnants of the genocidal militias, but with a far more sinister motive
in mind: resource extraction. Rwandan and Ugandan backed rebels
massacred civilians, looted valuable minerals, employed slave labor and
child soldiers, and even in one instance took apart an entire factory
and moved it across the border into Rwanda.

All the while, Rwanda and Uganda have continued to be the
darlings of Western governments and corporations. Foreign companies
have profited from the conflict in the Congo, in some cases even doing
business directly with murderous rebel groups. Rwanda and its clean
streets, female-heavy legislature, and environmentally conscious
leadership is supported heavily by Western countries and wooed, often
patronizingly so ("a functioning African state! Oh my!) by Western
companies and religious groups.

If this doesn't make much sense, it's because in one
fundamental way, the United Nations itself doesn't make much sense: if the UN is the collective voice of its members, why does it so often intervene in ways that conflict with the actions of those members? It
is not clear what level of success the UN will have in the DRC, though
it's easy to be pessimistic about its chances. It is also not clear
whether the deployment of peacekeeping forces in general is the best
method for protecting innocent people and bringing an end to conflicts.
What is certainly clear is that supporting UN peacekeeping missions
gives powerful countries a means for appearing to proactively support a
peace process without actually having to take the difficult step of
interrupting the business of capitalism and resource extraction.

And so the UN force arrives as a band-aid on a gaping
wound. If the UN fails, as it has so often in the past, it will
certainly be roundly criticized by those who consider it weak and
inept. But perhaps that is not fair to the UN. International
institutions are, after all, only as good (in any sense of that word) as
the countries that run them. The irony is, then, that what would make
the UN a force for good in the world is if its member states were forces
for good. But if the conflict in the DRC teaches us anything, it's
this: if the UN member states were forces for good, we wouldn't need a
United Nations at all.

About Me

I am a graduate of the University of San Francisco's master's in International Studies Program, where I wrote my thesis on Odious Debt in Sub-Saharan Africa. This site will focus on African issues, particularly debt, politics, and U.S. foreign policy. I hope you find it interesting.
email: andrew.hanauer@gmail.com